Foreign Minister: Hungary Continue Vetoing Ukraine’s NATO Integration

Hungary Today 2018.12.17.

“Hungarian communities across the border will not be sacrificed for geopolitical interests or under international pressure,” Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said in Parliament on Monday. Western allies exert “unbelievable pressure” on Hungary to give up its position vetoing Ukraine’s NATO integration, he insisted, but added that Hungary would insist until “Ukraine drops its anti-Hungarian policies”. “I don’t care what Russia thinks about that matter,” he added.

On the subject of economic aid to ethnic Hungarian communities, Szijjártó noted that subsidies under the programme have so far totalled 60 billion forints (EUR 186m), the largest part, 38 billion forints, going to Hungarians in Serbia’s Vojvodina province.

Szijjártó said that the government had concluded an agreement with Russia’s Gazprom concerning the quantity and price of gas to be supplied to Hungary next year. He added that “we need to keep all irons in the fire to maintain the country’s energy security”.

We need to talk to everybody and here, too, we must not yield to any pressure aimed at excluding a source.”

Szijjártó insisted that large western European companies, together with Gazprom, were planning a gas pipeline from Russia to western Europe bypassing Ukraine, while central Europe is being left out of the scheme. “After all that we are stigmatised as Russian spies,” Szijjártó said, and added that Russia’s international assessment was “incorrect”.

Concerning the US, Szijjártó said that the country was Hungary’s largest export market outside Europe. He added that western Europe “creates artificial hysteria” around President Donald Trump, “in which Hungary has never taken part”.